Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Taco night

Stop me if this scenario sounds familiar. You're sitting in your home in the late afternoon/early evening, and your stomach is--gently at first, and then with increasing insistence--starting to remind you that dinnertime is approaching and that you'd better come up with a plan. So you sort of poke around your fridge and cabinets, but there's really not much of anything in the house; you put off the question and do something else for a while, but, inevitably, hunger wins out and inspiration follows quickly on its heels. Such was the case for me earlier this week, when I wanted to cook something for dinner but didn't want to have to make a shopping trip. I had chicken and rice, but couldn't think of anything interesting to do with them, until I spied a can of refried beans in the cabinet. All at once it came to me: tacos. I put in a phone call to my roommate, who was returning home from work, and asked her to pick up corn tortillas, lettuce, an onion and some cilantro; with the chicken, rice, beans and tomatoes I already had, we could whip up a quick and filling meal. And that's exactly what we did.

I'm not going to provide a recipe, because you can put anything you like in a taco. Our particular version featured a corn tortilla base; a scoop of white rice cooked with a little olive oil, onion and cumin; canned vegetarian refried beans; grilled chicken breast coated with cumin, coriander, crushed red pepper flakes and salt; shredded lettuce; diced tomatoes and onions; and sprigs of fresh cilantro: